Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. Best Ofs

Best Windows Vista Gadgets

By

vista-gadgetsStill running on Vista and tired of all your Windows 7 upgraded friends thinking they’re cooler than you? Download some of these free Windows Vista gadgets and give your sidebar something to brag about. We narrowed down some of the top-rated and coolest Windows Vista Gadgets. To download these gadget check out the Windows Live Gallery.

DriveInfo Gadget

The DriveInfo gadget monitors the free space available in your hard drive, and displays it in GB and a percentage. The DriveInfo gadget can save you a lot of time if your frequently check up on the free space in your hard drives.

XM Online Radio

Related

This easy to use gadget accesses Sirius XM Online Radio and includes automatic searching of artist, mp3, video, product, and album from sites like Amazon, EBay, and YouTube. And if you like to sing along to the songs, this gadget also provides a lyric search feature.

Speed Test

With Speed Test you can monitor CPU (over 8 cores) and RAM usage by itself and it has the ability to test maximum bandwidth speed (Internet Speed Test), your own website download speed, response time and errors, hard drive space and activity, WIFI Signal strength, upload and download data transfers and so much more.

margu-NotebookInfo2 Gadget

This gadget takes system monitoring seriously. The margu-NotebookInfo2 gadget can track system uptime, CPU and RAM use, wireless network strength and the battery level.

iPhone Battery Gadget

This cool little gadget mimics the iPhone’s battery level indicator and according to users, this gadget looks great on a desktop. This gadget helps you keep track of your laptop’s available power.

Auction SideBar Tool

The Auction Sidebar Tool is an extremely popular gadget that is  designed to make managing your eBay account hassle-free. Its color coded view system enables quick identification of winning or losing bids and this convenient gadget is in synchronized real-time with eBay.

SidePlayer Music Search Gadget

SidePlayer will search and play over 2 million songs and audio tracks. This gadget will play music right on your desktop without launching any browsers. All the music for SidePlayer is supplied for free by various music providers.

All Search Gadget

The All Search Gadget allows you to search 10 different search engines = Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, Amazon, eBay, Dictionary, Weather, Bing and News.

CPU Meter Gadget

This gadget displays two dials: one that tracks your system’s CPU usage, and another that tracks and shows your physical memory usage.

WeatherBug

WeatherBug provides live weather conditions for anywhere in the world on your Sidebar and supplies detailed forecasts, radar, weather cameras, and severe weather alerts from any of WeatherBug’s 8,000 Tracking Stations.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Dena Cassella
Dena Cassella
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Haole built. O'ahu grown
The best Cyber Week deals under $50 you can still shop now
An Amazon Fire Stick

Cyber Monday has officially ended, but a lot of Cyber Week deals are still going strong. As the tradition goes, it's the best time of the year to shop and score major savings, making it the perfect time to get gifts for everyone on your list. The best part is that you can keep shopping as it looks like these offers will stay for a while.

We know that you want to buy some things for yourself that don't break the bank or to use this time to stock up on reasonably priced gifts. Here, everything is $50 and under, making it a perfect gift list for people who are our typical Digital Trends readers.
Herd Mentality — $20 $25 21% off

Read more
Windows 11 Recall finally arrives, but with one new problem
Recall screenshot.

The Windows 11 Recall feature has been troublesome since its announcement. Now that the feature is available in a testing capacity, it is still causing users some issues.

Tech reviewers testing the feature have observed that Recall will now fail to save the snapshots that allow the function to work. CNBC noted that it may take “several minutes” for a snapshot to save, which may leave delays in the AI processing. Tom Warren of The Verge, noted on Bluesky that snapshots were not saving at all in his experience.

Read more
Disk Drill vs. DMDE: best no-subscription data recovery app
disk drill vs dmde pro and data recovery software appear in a split screen on pc monitor

The biggest names in data recovery software require subscriptions, which seems wasteful given you should only need these apps on rare occasions. You probably aren’t accidentally deleting files and experiencing drive failures several times in a single year, so an option to make a one-time purchase could be more attractive.
When I reviewed Disk Drill Pro and DMDE Professional, I was impressed that these no-subscription apps effectively restored lost files without ongoing fees. To help you choose between them, I’ll compare the user interfaces, feature sets, recovery accuracy, and customer service quality, so you can pick the best data recovery software for your needs.
Specs

Disk Drill Pro
DMDE Standard

Read more